The tail wags the dog when it comes to the politics of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce. A few businesses underwrite the chamber’s electioneering with results contrary to the interests of most Kansas businesses.

The Kansas Chamber Political Action Committee conducts the chamber’s campaign tactics, and prior to the August primary elections took Kansas politics to new lows with postcard smears designed to befuddle voters with diversionary messages. The deceptions included specious charges that targeted opponents. Front groups with misleading labels were used to hide the Chamber’s name from the most scurrilous mudslinging. Rather than addressing issues directly their postcards resorted to unsubstantiated allegations, guilt by association, and innuendo to denigrate opponents. Late reporting helped conceal their tactics from voters and the press.

The chamber’s descent into election trickery is a relatively new development. For most of the last 40 years not only did the organization responsibly represent business interests in the state Capitol, but it also supported a balanced tax policy and defended funding for good quality public schools, postsecondary education, and highways, among other core services.

The change in campaign strategy parallels the chamber’s call for eliminating state income taxes and opposing any change in the reckless tax cuts of 2012 that exempted over 300,000 businesses from income taxes.

Beginning in 2012 the chamber PAC dramatically boosted its campaign coffers, raising $2.2 million for the period, 2012-2016, according to data compiled from its reports available through the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission. That amount is more than triple the comparable figures of the prior five-year period.

While the chamber PAC has upped its campaign game, a declining number of Kansas businesses are carrying water to support its efforts. For example, according to its reports to the Ethics Commission, four businesses and business owners alone contributed over 59 percent of the PAC’s war chest over the past five years. And in the last two years these same four businesses financed over 63 percent of the PAC’s campaigns.

Those four businesses and owners identified in PAC reports are: Koch Industries of Wichita; Justin Hill Jr., of Lawrence and the Lawrence Paper Company; Ivan Crossland and Crossland companies, of Columbus, Kan.; and David Murfin and Murfin Drilling, of Wichita.

In essence, four Kansas businesses are driving the nefarious campaigns of the Kansas Chamber to the detriment of the legitimate interests of all Kansas businesses in high quality public services. In good public schools. In accessible and excellent state universities and colleges. In vocational education. In dependable state highways. In assistance to the state’s most vulnerable citizens.

Kansas business owners may want to take a cue from Kansas voters who overwhelmingly rejected chamber-endorsed candidates in August primary elections. Voters defeated 18 candidates anointed by the chamber, including 13 incumbent state legislators. More candidates aligned with the chamber are likely to fall in November.

The Kansas Chamber should represent the broad and varied interests of Kansas businesses not just a few with deep pockets who finance the Chamber PAC.

— H. Edward Flentje is professor emeritus at Wichita State University.